PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF PALAEONTOLOGY. 377 



On the other hand, their opponents maintain that there is no evidence 

 that species were created as we find them, bnt that there is reason to 

 believe that all living things are the result of the gradual modification 

 of one or more primitive forms. 



Passion and the odium tJieologicum are too often allowed to enter into 

 the discussion of these views. The triumph of either, except so far as 

 it is the triuuiph of truth, is to the man of science, however, a matter 

 of profound indifference; and in this spirit the arguments on both sides 

 are thus shortly summed up : 



(/. Those who maintain the first view urge that all evidence tends to 

 show that, in the ordinary course of things, living beings can only ^ake 

 their origin from pre-existing living beings f so that, even if the indefi- 

 nite modifiabilitj' of species were admitted, it would yet be necessary to 

 suppose a direct creative interposition in order to account for the first 

 germ of all ; and if we admit one direct interposition, it is said, there is 

 no ditlficulty in admitting twenty or twenty thousand. To this it is 

 replied, tliat, although there may be no greater ditiiculty in the one case 

 than in the other, yet the assumption of creative acts, being in reality 

 nothing more than a grandiloquent way of expressing our ignorance of 

 the real connection of the phenomena, and our incompetence to conceive 

 their origination, everj^ reduction in the number of such assumi)tious is 

 a clear gain to science. 



It is furthermore urged that the direct creation of a species is an 

 occurrence which not only has no scientific evidence in its favor, but is, 

 in the nature of things, incapable of being supported by such evidence. 

 For, suppose that in a glass of water, perfectly free from a trace of organic 

 matter, a new species of fish were suddenly to make its appearance 

 before the eyes of half a dozen naturalists, not one of them would believe, 

 or would be justified in believing, that this was a direct creation out of 

 nothing. Philosophically it would be illogical, and religiously it would 

 be mere superstition to believe that which is in direct contradiction to 

 our universal experience of the modes of action of the Creator. 



b. It is atiiirmed that, in some cases, animals and plants of the same 

 species inhabit such completely separated regions that their origin, 

 except by independent creation, within their present area is inconceiv- 

 able. One of the strongest cases of this kind is that afforded by a 

 marine crustacean, sometimes seen in our fish markets, the I^orway 

 lobster, (Xephrops uorvegicus.J This animal is found on the shores of 

 Norway and of the northern parts of the British islands, but not on our 

 southern shores, nor on the Atlantic coast of France, Spain, or Portu- 

 gal ; it reappears, however, at Nice in the Mediterranean, and abounds 

 in the Adriatic about Venice. 



There appears to be no doul)t that the northern and the southern 

 forms are specifically icfentical, and it is naturally asked, how could 

 these isolated detachments of one species have migrated to such widely- 

 sei)arated points without leaving some colonies on the only road which 

 is open to them, viz., the western shores of Europe? And if their 

 present distribution is not to be accounted for by migration, how is it 

 explicable, except by supposing that the stock of each detachment was 

 created where we find it ? 



Were the limits of the land and sea fixed and unchangeable, were 

 there no such things as geological change, the problem might seem to 

 be insoluble. But the instability of the land and the consequent inces- 

 sant alteration of dry laud and deep sea at the very same points of the 

 earth's surface, are the first lessons of the student of geology. This 

 being the case, however, the argument at once loses its force;" for if by 

 the submergence of Central Europe the Mediterranean and the North 



